


Bad men die

by authorettejasmin



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Under the Red Hood
Genre: Amnesia, Becomes clearer as Jason regains his mind, Canonical Character Death, Canonical rebirth, Confused stream of conscious in the beginning, Family Feels, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Slow Build, Unreliable Narrator, Unresolved Emotional Tension, anger issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 09:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5920528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/authorettejasmin/pseuds/authorettejasmin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I do not sleep; a symbol burns out in the sky and my body tingles, sweats cold and aches bone-deep. The arms around me squeeze tighter and I feel him shake behind me.<br/>He is not a bad man, he should not die. I will not let him die.</p>
<p>Jason digs his way out but it isn't Talia who finds him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

This person calls me by a name, a name that seems familiar. I do not know him, and yet I think I do. Feelings and emotions linger at the edges of my mind, barely formed because the memories aren’t there with them. Instead there are holes, gaps, vacant spots that are only filled with dried up dirt and burnt ashes, the soil for what used to be there.

He touches my face, brushes my hair back and guides me gently around the house. His eyes are blue, and sad and begging, the skin puffy and red though he hides the tears from me. I do not know what they cry for, I do not know why.

My body is numb but sometimes there’s a tingling sensation, above my ribs, around my neck, the echo of metal touching skin.

I can leave, leave this apartment where he keeps me, but I do not think I will. Not again. Tonight was the first and last. He had found me straight away, surrounded by these men that had spoken words of filth at me and tried to touch where only he has touched. They’d thought me weak, prey, another piece of rubbish in an alley called ‘Crime.’ He’d dropped from the sky, landed in front of me and stopped me from getting rid of them (because they were bad and bad men should die.) He had used cuffs, to tie the bad men up and then dropped to his knees in front of me. He’d been wearing odd clothes, tight and black and blue (so blue, pretty blue eyes, but in the black void of sleep they change to green and the green eyes wake me up) and he’d held me tight, pulled me against that strong, lean chest. I’d stared at the wall, heard the distant sound of cars on the main roads, the scuttle of nearby rats scurrying around the bins and all the while his warmth had tried to fill me up. But this body is cold, and dark. His bright warmth cannot reach me.

He had asked if I was okay and I had looked at him. That familiar but not-familiar face hidden behind a black mask (it was like the other side of a coin that you forget about, lose an exact memory of the particulars until you look at it again.)

I hadn’t said anything, my tongue always fat and heavy in my mouth and words scrambled funny in my head, but after a moment I’d inclined my head to the side. 

It was a movement of curiousity, of not-understanding I think, but he took it as a yes. Though maybe it was a yes, I do not know, it has not been long since I have progressed to thinking in yes’s and no’s rather than exist and fight and move.

Survive.

He’d pressed a callused finger to his ear, spoken to someone in quick short words that wasn’t me (he does this often, but usually in the privacy of another room, his smile strained when he talks to someone called ‘B’) and then he’d taken me home.

I’d followed, hand in his, flowing from one roof to another with ease. We’d gone in through the window, the one I see him come in through late at night while I lay straight-legged in bed, eyes wide at the ceiling. He had put me in the shower, slid off the heavy pants and oversized shirt that went to my thighs, taking off his own clothes - his suit, as well.

He’d washed the blood from my cut and bruised knuckles quietly, not speaking at all except to murmur sounds that made me close my eyes and tip my head under the water at his behest. After, he had wiped me down and put me into soft, thick clothes with funny little patterns in blue, taken me to bed and wrapped me in his blanket and arms.

I could leave, I can leave, but he is the one who: guides me gently, feeds me, clothes me, speaks words of kindness to me.

Of love.

I left because I am wrong and something is not right but the outside is even more wrong than the quiet darkness of his room, than the sweetness of his laughter when I frown at something silly he does, than the vibrancy of his voice when he speaks of a Robin that’s Red. There is no him out there to hold me, no him to try to make sense of the words and thoughts in my head, there is only bad men and bad men should die.

He is not a bad man, he should not die. I will not let him die.

So I will stay here, eyes open, unseeing deep into the early hours of the night. He thinks I am sleeping, for I make sure he thinks so, but I will stay awake and keep watch.

I do not sleep; a symbol burns in the sky out the window and my body tingles, sweats cold and aches bone-deep. The arms around me squeeze tighter and I feel him shake behind me.

He sobs, buries his nose into my hair, splays his hands across the marks, the scars that decorate my body and the wounds that are still healing after all these months (how many months I do not know, but he would know the exact time.)

And I hear him cry,

'Jason.'

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

I punch; my knuckles having gone past the point of feeling to just a sense of motion now. I rip through the air, my muscles strained and trembling. Things are under my fists, cracking, breaking and now I am into it I don’t know how to stop. It had started off with a scream, like I was finally letting out something that had been simmering inside and it was escaping out through my throat, down my arms and exploding from my fists.

Release.

It kept coming and coming until my face was wet and my arms coiled so tight and my throat raw. It’s still coming and the hard things beneath me are all soft and gooey now. I hear a noise behind me, it means _danger, attack, I’m not your son_ , so I turn and this time it comes out of my legs and shatters ribs underneath my foot.

I’m on the danger in a moment, jaw shutting so hard that I feel the reflexive pierce of pain as teeth cut into flesh. I can’t really see anything except that they’re wearing black and holding a knife - no guns because _we don’t use guns_ so I’ll use my hands instead.

My hands shake, or maybe I’m shaking and I can only just see a bit, but I’m shaking with it, with whatever is still spewing out of my mouth in a wave of scalding fire. It pours from me, my hands go tense and flex and then I clamp them tight around the dangers face (face?) and push my thumbs in. They go, go in deep, down to the insides of the hole but there’s nothing inside. Nothing left but the gunk and useless stuff and it’s nothing like what I’ve got inside, the hole that’s hidden behind my eyes. But I can see it. _I know it’s there._..

Full of dirt and wood and _mother I’ll save you_ and pain and rage because –

“I won’t be your punching bag again!”

I slam the man’s head down against the cement, thumbs still in sockets, again and again and _again_ until the next bad man comes and tries to hurt me but I won’t let _bad man hurt me_ because I can protect myself.

There’s no one here to save me. No one is coming.

No one. No one. No one came.

It’s leaving now, the hole has been burnt at the edges and now all the ash is just falling back inside, the landscape a snowy black.

 The cement is cold on my knees but it’s nothing compared to a thousand splinters making their home in your skin (the finest mahogany is no different from others when it’s daggers of wood in your hands.)

I slump, my nose is blocked, I can’t breathe through it, I have to open my mouth with my tongue all fat and heavy and producing too much saliva. My heart throbs so fast I feel like it’s not there at all, a useless wet lump that’s just there to block the air in my lungs and the logic in my mind.

Pit-pat, pit-pat.

Tap, tap, tap.

Steps. Steps – getting heavier.

Steps running towards me.

“Ja-n . . . Jas---”

You can’t treat me like this. I gave everything for you and now I’m just back in the same place, a gutter rat lying on the street surrounded by scum.

“Jason.”

Danger. I roll, away from the grasping person, throw a kick out even though it’s like my leg is filled with lead. Lead and wood and pain. Everything tastes like ash and the world is gray. Danger rolls me onto my back, pulls me up into their lap and I see black ringed eyes.

Bats.

I taste it on my tongue again but it’s all burnt out, only ash is left. I’m worth more, I was worth more; I thought I was worth more.

I guess I wasn’t.

“Jason, Jason, listen to me. Focus. Look at me.”

Why no stern tone of ‘Robin’, demanding that I say what wrong thing I’d done now? Why no, ‘go back home’? (Home, isn’t home a two room apartment with messy dishes, a bookcase by two warm green chairs and the light laughter of someone? Wasn’t home a mansion and a plate of warm cookies? Wasn’t it a threadbare blanket, a warm arm and the tv showing re-runs?)

“Jason, Jay, Jay-bird, Little Wing, come back to me, listen. I’m here. You’re not alone.”

My mouth moves and dan- No. Him, he, home, jolts, shards of wood surrounded in fire, something deep in me aches.

His blue eyes water, encased in black and I just want to see his face and he leans over, presses his mouth to my hair and says “you aren’t worthless. You aren’t just a plaything. You aren’t a punching bag. You’re just you. You’re my Jason, my Jay-bird, my Little Wing and you need to come on home.”

Ah, I remember: that taste, that smell. All of ash and burnt anger but I can’t quite remember what I was angry over.

Dick is here, he’s holding me. My limbs aren’t working again, oh, it’s been quite a few months since it’s been this bad, at least of what I can remember. I know I don’t quite remember all of it.

I blink, look around but Dick covers my eyes, turns me back to face him and smiles that smile that seems familiar, like I’ve been seeing it a lot lately. I don’t like it. It feels new somehow. Smiling is what he does, so why is this so different?

I lift up my hand, see the tattered bits of my skinned knuckles and the blood but don’t really feel it and pat Dick’s face.

It’s okay, I try to say, don’t cry.

Maybe he understands, maybe I do get the words out.

He doesn’t cry. But I still wonder why my face is so wet. He helps me up, and presses a finger to his ear, calling someone, a bird that makes me remember flying and soaring through a dark windy world. The person on the end answers and they sound neutral and I taste more ash on my tongue. It falls down the back of my throat, into the gaping hole that spread out inside of me.

A little stockpile of ash and just underneath it, the tiniest ember.

“Y _ou’ve been a bad boy.’_

_“This’ll hurt you a lot more than me.”_

The person on the other side of the radio says something and Dick replies, "Thanks Robin, Nightwing out.”

Robin.

The ember catches fire.

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

He is not where he should be. Not in front of me, swinging from building to building with flips and turns that my muscles ache to repeat. Nor is he below, on the ground, flitting in and out of the dark corners like a winged predator that only leaves flashes of blue and beaten bodies behind.

I have lost sight of him and I do not think I can catch up. My chest already burns with the crisp air that I am sucking in, my hands shaking with adrenaline and exertion because no matter how often I try to follow him, I am still clumsy and wrong and not-right.

I crouch down at the edge of the roof, rest myself on haunches to peer over the side. I try to breathe quieter because maybe he has noticed I am here, maybe he can hear the rasping of my lungs, the crunch of broken cement beneath my sock covered feet (stupid, stupid, but I hadn’t had time to grab my shoes, _you never think ahead Jason._ ) Maybe he is mad and I do not want him to be mad but I cannot stop. I cannot stay while he is gone. I need to follow, to see why he goes out when the sky gets dark and he thinks I am sleeping. He doesn’t realise I never sleep at night, because that is the time when I need to be the most awake, to escape the long sleeps of black all around me, the walls closing in and the heavy taste of dirt on my tongue.

Pressure, pressure, weighing down on me.

The dark is both my ally and my enemy. I can hide in it but I know something is watching me.

So instead I attack, I go out, because I cannot stay trapped in that room where he tries to fix me and make me less broken, where he gives quick glances at the white strip of my hair like he is surprised every time he sees it. That room where he strokes fingers across my scalp and fingers at that white bit of lock and then he holds his body just that bit more tense. In those times he tries to cover it with touches, smiles, giving me whatever I want to eat though all I can taste is worms.

He says I loved chilli dogs but I can't taste them enough to know and when he asks I nod and lie. They taste good, yes, great, my favourite. At least those words come out right.

Why am I here, what am I doing? Questions, questions they plague me.

He left me, he left tonight. He always leaves. Too often, without telling me the real reason why.

“ _Work – we have a few parties going on at the bar tonight so I'll be back late.”_

“ _Groceries, it’ll be quick, don’t worry.”_

“ _Just going out on a short errand for a bit.”_

“ _I’m going to see a friend, be back in a jiffy.”_

Lies cover with truth. His smile always guileless and teasing. These are the things he wants me to remember in the long hours of his absence. But I cannot.

My head may be an empty graveyard, just the decay of whatever was once there but I remember my training.

Training – what training? Who trained me?

I don’t know, it hurts, I feel a rage so deep-seated that I think it’s always been inside of me. He looks at me as if my wings are brittle. As if I can no longer fly.

“ _Little broken baby bird.”_

I’ll use this fire to burn my pieces back into place, spread the molten fire over the cracks until I’m a crisscross work of flaming strength. I don’t let him know, haven’t told him yet. My mind can't work out what I’m not sure my mouth is ready to say and I don’t know if I would say it right.

Dick hurts, I hurt him. I do not want to but the rage can spill over. If I open my mouth, if I unclench my fist, I’ll burn him from the inside out like I burn from the inside out.

_He doesn't care about me, he's too angry at B to want me._

It’s burning tonight, so much that the soil in my head is starting to turn to dust and I hear a timer counting down.

I do not find him this night and so I return to his house.

Before he knows I’ve been gone.

 


	4. Chapter 4

For all the words he says, Dick is a not a fast-speaker. He thinks, completely and wholly, about what he should say. He speaks like he has recited the lines a thousand times, memorised them so well there’s no rush to get it out. Each time is as sincere as the first.

But tonight there was something wrong. The control too strong. Words were measured but breathless at the end, somehow tired from speaking so slow.

He leaves me, I cannot have him leave me. I cling like a chick to a mother bird and my body is heat. So strange from the cold, the cold that has been all I’ve known since that night he held out his hand to the bleeding and animalistic shell I was, a bottle of empty green at our feet and a woman, dangerous, deceitful, watching from the distance. He'd asked me to follow, ignoring the woman and I had.

Again, I follow, just as I have done for all the nights this week.

I follow, I follow, and he’s rushed and doesn’t quite know. But he’s fast, too fast and I lose sight of him. I’m in an alleyway, something familiar in its layout.

I have been here before, not just recently when I beat those men and saw Dick in his costume the first time but even before that.

I see a sign, I see an old man cuddled up into his fraying cloak and the image of a car imposes itself into the scene. My heavy feet take me to the spot where it’s parked, my breath showing in the air. It might be the end of winter or the beginning, all I know is I used to feel this cold inside my own body and now all I feel is the burning of these wretched marks that _stain_ my body.

I drop to my knees, feel the sensation of the rubber at the tips of my fingers, harder and thicker than most tyres I’ve stolen. I want to rip the wheels off, take them for money. But what is money to me now? I no longer ache for food to fill my belly as I could starve now and not now. I don't need clothes to warm me on the nights when a fire in a bin can just isn’t enough because Dick has taken care of all of that.

There is a man behind me, he says something.

I spin, arms up but no one is there. The shadows are creeping in and I clasp my hands to my head.

Dick is gone, flown away. Dick lied to me, lied to me, he always lies!

I know it, I know him. Where was I before he found me? The memories, they come and go, but they've been burnt out of me and its only when I walk through the ash that I stumble upon them.

Dick was taught well but without the mask on I know his tells.

The tone of his voice, the way his eyes can never stay directly on me when they speak, choosing to flit around instead, to the bandaids on my cut-up knuckles, or the rectangle scar that peeps out the top of my shirt. They are the only things I can remember when he is gone for too long.

They play over and over again, rubbing the inside of me raw, my mind full of the knowledge that understand what each subconscious movement, every slight tell of his body, is really saying.

It’s hard sometimes, because when he remembers to, he lies so good but he's been a liar since the beginning, since his beginnings in the circus that it's no surprise he is so good.

But I can understand better now, things are becoming clearer as I create an awareness out of the dead thing I was.

I need to find him, go, go, go. The rage has left me, the coldness permeating my body again but I know it will come back. The waves of it are getting stronger and stronger each time and in the madness of it all my thoughts run wild and dreams ( _memories?_ ) take over my sight.

I get up and I leave, the car isn’t there anymore. It wasn’t really ever there, not here in this alley way and not in this time.

My socks are wet and I don't know how long I was lost in old memories but it wasn't raining when I got here. I'm going out of this place, away from the broken and crumbling buildings and back to Dick. This city isn't right, it's not familiar ground. I remember a city with robins and bats that fly through buildings like they're trees.

But when I think of that I am both the robin flying and the hunter on the ground, wanting to shoot it down.

I start to run, I want to go back. Dick is safety, Dick is warmth.

My foot slides on wet cement, dropping my body out from underneath me. I land on my shoulder, the impact jarring up my arm and taking the force of my fall.

There is a cold sting – for though I understand better now, my brain healing, my body’s movements are not yet fully in my control.

In the numbness of it all, that tiny source of pain bleeds through.

Tonight there will be no more lies. No more secrets.

No more _playing games._

I get up and look around, keep my body low to the ground, experience has taught me to be safe though I do not quite remember where this experience comes from. I do not remember a lot of things. And now I am aware enough to realise that there is meant to be more, more of me. There are meant to be trees that bear fruit in the dead ashes of my soul.

I want to ask questions, but I do not know what to ask. I do not know how to ask. So I haven't. And now I am here, alone, with my brother gone and I don’t quite know how to get back home. All the skyscrapers look the same but wrong. I know I was used to a different landscape that shines a bright yellow bat symbol in the sky.

I can’t trust my mind. I can’t trust my eyes. Sometimes the bats are laughing at me, ' _ha ha ha’_ and I have to scream.

I can’t scream now. Have to find him. But where to go? My throat is tight. There is a noise. I turn.

It’s a different one. A different type of bat. Coloured red, with green to outline. I hear laughter, but not the one that screeches. I smell burning, but not the burnt food that Dick cooks. This burning is of tires and petrol and the hum of a silent car.

The bat, no, not a bat, because it’s wrong, it’s a fake, it’s not black at all, is perched on the other ledge. The roof door into the building is beside it, shading half the red and green creature from the moonlight.

I brush a hand down my clothes, not the pyjamas I first went out in all those many sleepless nights ago, but a plain pair of black pants, shirt and jacket made of cotton. I curl my fingers into the hem, ball up the cotton. Thicker would be better. Something more than what I have now to protect my body. I uncurl my fingers, wipe the sweat of my hand on my backside and am surprised at the sensation. I expected to touch something scaly.

That doesn’t make sense.

The creature moves subtly but does not come fully into the light.

So I ask, because I do not know many things and this is a question I can ask. “Who are you?”

The creature jerks back, a noise escapes its throat and I want to go over. But bats can be gone in one dark moment to the next so I make sure not to move.

My shoulder aches from my fall, and I focus on that to keep my mind present.

The fake bat moves but does not. I can tell like I can tell when someone is at the door that Dick doesn’t want me to see. The angles, the line of his shoulders, the stillness that is full of so much. I am still, I can be still, but sometimes restlessness runs through me and I don’t understand. How can one be so unmoving with all that inside of them?

“Hello.”

I startle, hunker down, feel like bearing my teeth.

' _Hello Jason, my name’s Talia. I’m here to help you.’_

That wasn’t a bat but a viper pretending to be.

This one is different, bat, viper I don’t know, but still it is dangerous.

I don’t know how I know but I do. Sometimes I can’t hold a spoon right, my palms cramping shut and my wrists creaking, sometimes I can’t handle watching tv because the first time I saw a white pasty face and a big red nose I came back to myself with a terrified Dick repeating my name and my fist through the television and sometimes I can’t eat for days because everything is all ash and death. Sometimes these things happen and I don’t know why and I don’t know how to get through them except to listen to my instincts. My instincts say to listen to the one who calls himself my brother, so I do. And now my instincts say to be careful. So I will be.

“Whoa, I’m not going to do anything. Just saying hello.”

The red and green creature tries to calm me and I want to bite but I also want to touch him because that black hair is like brother’s and he dresses in tight clothes as well. So he might know my brother, they might be friends.

Dick tells me family and friends take care of each other.

I watch the creature quietly though I still want to bare my teeth in a snarl to send it away. But nobody talks to me, only Dick talks to me. Dick is gone. Dick is a liar.

I want to find him.

“You seem a bit tense, would you like me to come out of the shadows?” It asks softly and I would. I want to see it properly. See the enemy, know the enemy, defeat the enemy. KILL the enemy.

No. Don’t kill.

_'We don’t kill.'_

There’s a noise in my head and I’m tugging at my hair and the creature lands on the ground softly in front of me, hands up and showing the lack of weapon. But that’s a lie too. That outfit has tiny grooves and pockets and everything inside is a weapon in itself.

“Are you looking for something?” It asks again, another question. The creature seems to hesitate, then slowly lowers itself down until its cross-legged on the ground, cape spread out behind. “Or perhaps you are looking for someone?”

Yes, someone. Dick. Brother. I just wanted to know what he really does. I want to know what he's hiding from me, why I'm here, who I am.

He says I am his brother and my name is Jason. He says I was hurt badly, that someone hurt me but that he's keeping me safe while I heal.

In the beginning I knew nothing so I believed everything but now I know different.

I know he's lying, I know I was dead.

What little I know is enough to think that maybe I should have stayed dead.

The creature is waiting. Seemingly calm but I know that steady thrum of fight or flight, I’ve felt it myself. I can’t tell where its looking because the mask’s eyes are blanked out but I know it can see me, that its watching, waiting for a response.

It's outfit I know, the R on the chest prominent and part of me wants to rip it off, burn it.

_'Boom boom goes the little robin.'_

I tug my hair again, try to think, unstick my tongue from the top of my mouth and say, “Dick.”

Am I allowed to tell others his name? Do others know? I just want to go back now because I can’t find the way myself. Maybe this creature can find it for me.

I could follow that red and green easily, its glaringly bright and meant to draw attention. _Distraction, a façade. Batman needs a partner._

I jolt, and let go of the tendril that thought caused. It hurts, makes my wounds flare sharply, I don’t want to follow that road. Not yet. Not now.

Dick. I’ll go to Dick.

The creature solemly nods its head. “Would you like me to get him for you?”

I nod, I nod. I see the yellow underside of the cape and yellow bats smile in the background.

I hate. I hate. This creature is bad, its stirring up the dirt of the graveyard in my head.

_Kill it. Kill it._

“I’ll call him now then. And then we will just wait here for him to come okay?”

I must’ve made some movement, because the creature has one hand on the ear piece and another on the ground like he’s ready to jump up. No. If it knows Dick then I can’t hurt it. Dick wouldn’t be happy.

It calls.

“Nightwing, I've found your . . . guest.”

Noise, it stops speaking but keeps focus on me.

“He's soaked, shoulder might be dislocated but otherwise fine.”

He throws his voice to me, “Jason and I will just sit here and wait won't we? Wait for your brother.”

Brother, brother.

“Nightwing?”

“Yes, your brother,” the red and green boy says and yes I remember now. Nightwing is Dick, Dick is Nightwing. Nightwing is the blue and black outfit here wears. I'd heard men crying out in fear when Dick – Nightwing – had jumped down and attacked them. And then I'd had to run back before he got home.

What was Nightwing? Why had he fought those people? Is that what he was hiding from me every night? I saw that scene but forgot it until now, everything slips between my fingers like coarse, rough sand.

Are he and this boy friends?

He keeps speaking but my hearing comes in and out, my shoulder aching.

“Understood, Robin out.”

_'Robin out.'_

_'Robin out.'_

_Robin robinrobinrobin._

His throat is beneath my hand but the cape is high up on his neck and armoured. I want to, I want to tear it off, bare his pulsing artery and dig my teeth into the pulse.

Mine, mine, he took it. Took it.

“Replace, replace.”

He does not move under me, his whole body still. I frame it with my legs, knees on either side of his hips. The colours, the outfit, twisted, changed, different. Just like me.

“Jason,” the voice vibrate through the armour and I squeeze tighter.

“Robin,” I grind out, choking on it like a bird's frantic flutters held within the bite of my teeth.

“Replacement,” I say.

He goes silent, the boy, the Robin, the replacement, so red and green. All I can see is red and green, red and green.

“Jason, no one could ever replace you.”

The words taste like lies, ash in our mouths, a warehouse burning down and the tick-tock, tick-tock of a clock.

“Jason, you are upset. But do you know why?”

Why? Why? Why? Why?

My teeth chattering, clicking together like a laughing circus clown. Someone is muttering, over and over.

“Why? Why? Why?”

“I don't know Jason, won't you tell me why?”

I want to slice his neck with one of the knife's in Dick's kitchen but with that mask, in that costume, I feel like I'd be slicing my own throat.

Maybe it would be best if I did.

I should have stayed dead.

“Robin, Robin.”

“Yes, you were Robin.”

“NO!” I lift him by the neck and slam his head back down. He doesn't fight back, won't fight back.

I always fought back.

The blank spot in my head, in my soul, is a gaping black maw that's eaten everything but sometimes it coughs them back up.

Regurgitated out.

Mushy and deformed, just like me and everything smelling of a long burnt out fire.

“You're Robin, but Robin was me. Replace, replace, replace me.”

“Oh,” the boy says softly, wounded hurt, a baby bird struck down because the parent isn't here to protect it. Silly, stupid parent.

No one came for me.

Maybe if it dies the parent will finally learn, it shouldn't have had another Robin.

The boy's eyes, they look into me, piercing bright. Do they stare through and see the land of dead things inside of me?

Does he look and know I am a burnt husk of something that should have stayed dead?

“I was dead,” I say around a tongue that doesn't work right when I want to speak. It's the first time I've associated all my dreams of pain and death with the reality.

My name is Jason and I was dead but now I'm not.

The fragments are coming together, piece by piece and I know I was better of not remembering.

“You did die, yes,” the little robin speaks, gaining my attention. His voice does not tremble but it's so soft and high, a little baby bird. He has not been clipped, not yet, not the way I am.

I want to break his wings so he stays on the ground with me.

But – his brain works, he knows who I am. I need him to tell me more. There is no going back now and that grave of dead things inside of me is hungry, the dead are always starving, for all the things they've lost.

And I'm starving for vengeance.

“You crawled out of your grave and Dick found you. He saved you from Talia, Ra's Al Ghul's daughter, a so-far immortal eco-terrorist with fanatical assassins that follow his every order. Pretty much not the type of family you want to have any involvement with.”

A woman on the side of the road, coming toward me, a cup of something in her hand that held a green glow and then it was being poured down my throat, scorching my lungs -

“Talia found me.”

“Nightwing had been working on a different case but she is dangerous and when he saw her heading to Gotham he followed her. He fought her off then brought you back home.”

“Not home, not home, not, not.”

“Batman -”

I feel my lips roll back, know my teeth are out and I growl with hatred, a hatred I don't fully understand.”

“Batman, Batman, Batman -”

“Yes, after you – he went mad with grief Jason, he was going to kill someone, I had to step up, to stop him. Batman is a symbol, he can't kill.”

“Can't kill.”

“ . . . yes,” the little robin said but now he was wary, worried, I could hear it in that soft, weak little voice.

“Can't kill. Replaced me.”

“I always respected you when, you were my Robin – I'm not replacing you.”

“Respect? Repect? The replacement respects?”

“You're injured, you know you are. Your shoulder is hurt and your mind is still healing from the accident.”

“Death! Not an accident. Don't try to lie to me pretty little robin. Pretty little robin bleeding to death.”

“Nightwing will be here soon, why don't we go meet him?” The little robin tries to change my focus but all I can see looking at his domino is a big black bat with red smiling lips.

I think I black out because next there’s Dick holding me tight to his chest and in the corner of my eyes I see the creature with a tattered outfit and a bleeding lip.

“Sssh, Jason you’re okay. Tim is a good guy okay. A good guy. He’s your brother too.”

I bite at the chest in front of me, pushing, pulling, I don't know and Dick just brushes my hair and whispers into my ear.

I think I mumble, “I didn’t mean to, I didn't,” but when I turn there’s no one else around.

I do not know how long we stay there, curled into each other, rain peppering our skin but I take Dick’s hand when he offers, runs my fingers up the blue strip racing up his outfit like it’s a path showing the way home.

We reach the house, the door opens and light shines out from where I left it on.

Inside is warmth and light and my brother steps in, letting our hands separate when I don’t follow. He turns to ask me something, stops before he speaks and instead forces that smile that pretends he's okay with how something that should have stayed dead came back all broken and wrong.

“Take your time,” he says and I don’t know what I need time for but he moves to the kitchen and I hear the clatter of the dishes and draws opening and closing.

The gust of cold wind is seeping into the house but I stay standing there.

For seconds, for minutes.

At the corner of my eyes I see a flash of red and turn to face it. Replacement is there, perched on the opposite building’s banister. Sightless eyes, cape blowing, the blood gone from his lip.

Robin watches and waits.

Until it inclines its head at the door and we both hear Dick yelp from in the kitchen. I know he must have burnt himself again cooking for me, he sucks at it.

I do not look away from Robin, everything inside me a mess. I remember flying in a suit of my own, I remember pain and clawing, clawing out of wet wet death with mangled fingers.

I remember how tiny and small, how fragile that boy seemed beneath my legs. How he didn't try to hurt me like those men did long ago in that alley.

I step back into the apartment, staring at Robin and thinking, wondering, where the parent is.

The silly silly parent that let that little robin come out and meet me.

I close the door. 

Things are becoming clearer now.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Dick has been coming later and later, some days not at all and I try to ask what's wrong but he just grins that grin I hate and jokes that work is getting a little too crazy. I don't believe him so I say, “Other work problems?” And Dick just stares at me, something anguished and weighted with old memories in his gaze. I think I'm meant to have those memories too but I don't.

I should be thinking about Robin, about this ball of vengeance inside of me at being replaced but, sometimes I forget about the replacement and then, with how Dick's been lately, I can't keep both worries inside of me.

I know who and what Nightwing is and I know it's a secret. I've heard my neighbours talk about the blue-and-black vigilante and the bad people he's arrested. Dick is Nightwing, Nightwing is a vigilante. 

Dick is a cop.

It's funny, no, another word, between funny and unexpected, that's what Nightwing is. 

Now Dick doesn't try to hide it so much, I get to see as he leaves through the window, soaring through the skies with a grapple hook. He soars through the skies like he's never touched the ground and I can almost feel how the wind buffets at him, the joyous sensation of free-falling. I want to join him, to help, to take all the anger of my broken brain and take it out on bad men. 

But Nightwing says he doesn't kill and I think that's stupid. I think back, to what I can recollect of those first few months, when I was mostly animal and instinct and I went outside. I went outside and, and I saw things and I hurt bad people.

I killed them. I killed them and they deserved but it Nightwing – Dick, came and took me away, he and that little robin called Robin. 

Stupid, stupid. They deserve to die. But he's, he's too soft, too kind, if his hands were stained red they would shake but not mine, mine are already blackened and burnt, coated in the ash of whatever form of mercy I used to have.

Killing bad men is a mercy for their victims.

But now what's stupid is how Nightwing – Dick, is having something bad, really bad, happen to him but he won't tell me.

I know, I knnow I'm not right in my head, that I still forget words, that I still waking up shaking and screaming and I don't know if that little robin I see outside the corner of my eye is real or a hallucination (and how torn I am between protecting and destroying it) but I can help. 

He needs help, someone to get their hands bloody. 

Sometimes I don't think I can remember what it's like to look at my hands and not see red.

Dick took me in, sheltered me and I owe it to him. Not that he was like this for me the first time around.

First time – first first – I.

Tonight when he comes home I help. My fingers, numb, fat things, don't always do what I want, phantom sensations like my nails being pulled out coming in flashes, hot and cold. I help take off Dick's torn, wet and bloodied outfit, knowing the secret catches and security locks to disable. I – I know this instinctively and all the dead thing's in the graveyard, under all the ashy soil, shudder, writhe and try to crawl their way up, clamouring to be uncovered first. 

I keep them buried, I have more of my mind now, enough to know that some things I'm not ready yet to know.

I'm just a scared alley boy but I ain't stupid.

Dick's head is bent, the hair wet and smelling foul, like he took a dip in the wrong type of water. I peel Dick's now-harmless outfit down to his hips, the scars on his body as known to me as my own.

“Dick,” my mouth says and the man is trembling now, that foul water drip, drip, dripping from the ends of his clumped hair. I frown, bite at my bottom lip, my thoughts whirring at a sluggish pace. Problem solving is hard and I know it shouldn't hurt this much, shouln't send shards of pain through my temple but it does, still, I try my best. 

“Dick,” I try again, “Brother,” I say next but it's so strange in my mouth and unknown to my ears that I don't say it again. I've never called him that.

Dick's shoulders move up and down and now he's crying.

I don't, this is the wrong way, usually I'm the one shaking and blubbering and clawing at my scalp, trying to tear out all the flashes of a bright red smiling face and the tick, tick of a bomb.

Dick starts rocking back and forwards, yanking at his hair, stamping his feet on the floor and I raise the lumps of meat I call arms and wrap them around him. He stays tense, still rocking so I rock with him. 

I wish that little robin was here because all I have in me is rage, violence, death. The other half is just confusion.

But Dick is here and I am here and he's trying to be fine but he's not so I move from where I'm standing curling around my brother with his face pressed against my chest and I sit next to him. 

My arm curls behind him, my other around his front grabbing at his waist and I pull him into my shoulder, rocking us both. 

He said we were brothers, but he's never felt like that type of family. Whatever he feels like though, it is close, intimate, he's seen my flesh carved away and revealing the graveyard of my soul so this is the least I can do.

I scratch his scalp, snagging on wet, knotted clumps so I work on untangling them as I say, “Ssh Dickie, let it out. You need to cry pretty boy so just cry, cry and then tell me who hurt you.”

I hear my voice turn ugly but I don't say, I'll kill them, I'll destroy whoever hurt you and maybe Dick does hear it or maybe he doesn't but either way he's shaking and crying in my arms and it's hard to get my ears to catch every word he says to translate the sounds to proper knowledge in my head but I think I understand.

Blockbuster knows who Nightwing is. Blockbuster knows Dick Grayson is Nightwing.

He's hurt people, going to hurt more people, and it's going to be everyone around Dick.

Well Blockbuster doesn't know about me.

We're still rocking but it doesn't soothe me because I'm gnashing my teeth and everything is turning green.

“Not your fault, no, not, Blockbuster is evil, he's bad. Bad men should die.”

“I – I no, I can figure something out, some way to make this right. We don't kill Jason, we don't – we don't,” Dick fumbles over his words, just like me, stuck in a loop now. He doesn't kill but I think I do.

I press my cheek into the crown of Dick's head, hold his face to my chest and think how easy it would be for Blockbuster to snap Dickie's pretty little neck. Sometimes you have to play by the bad guys rules but I don't think Dick's going to do that.

“I will kill him,” I promise and Dickie's just out of it eough that he doesn't realise how serious I am.

Dick's sobs are quieting now and I'm thinking.

“How does he know?”

“A journalist, her names Maxine Michaels, she found out who I was and Blockbuster found out through her. I have to see her, find out why, find out how much she and him know. Maybe she can tell Blockbuster she got it wrong, maybe -”

“Was it on purpose?”

“What?”

“Did she want Blockbuster to know to hurt you?”

Dick makes a noise of disagreement but I talk over. “She's bad, just as bad as him.”

“No,” Dick defends her, sweet naïve Dick. “Doing her job, she couldn't have known what Blockbuster was going to do – he tried to kill my partner, Maxine, she was trying to report on the corruption on the force, Amy's good, she wouldn't want to take out the good guys. God Jay, they tried to kill her, it's all my fault.”

“No,” I spit, wondering why the good people always blame themselves instead of the actual monsters.

“Why if he hurts you?” Dick gasps out, trying to bring his knees up to curl into his body but I”m in the way. “What if – I just got you back! Bruce doesn't even know you're alive!”

I stiffen, that names rings and rings in my head, laughing, laughing.

I.

I push it away.

I push it away and tell Dick it's not his fault, console him, hug him the way he's hugged me so many times even as his shakes change from panic to cold shiver.

I hold on as the shape of him comes apart in my hands and I keep him there as he fights his way into sleep. On the bed he slumps and I ease him back, stripping off his outfit completely and covering him with the blanket. He doesn't want to let go but I untangle myself from his grip and then I sit on the end of the bed, just staring out.

I taste blood on my lips, all the shireks and bumps of the outside world fading away and I tunnel in on Dick's police belt, the one he never took out tonight, the one he carelessly leaves on the floor because he's actually quite a messy person in his own house.

If he was smart he'd keep it with him, but I know when he goes out next he'll be going out as Nightwing, not Officer Grayson. He'll be all alone, one vigilante against this city of monsters, one little bird flying solo, no one else around to care to save him.

I wonder if Robin would come, if he knew. I think he would. I think he'd die too, they'd both die, then there would be two little dead birds (three) and someone would have to take vengeance.

It's a good thing I'm not going to let that happen.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All mistakes are mine - especially since I've come back to this after two years, the last few chapters probably have so many errors ugh.

I take the gun before Dick wakes and hide it in my room. It feels heavy and cold in my grip and I flash back to wet soil pushing at me, suffocating me. 

I use the breathing methods Dick (re)taught me and work through the suffocation. I'd already been through that shit, I could get through it again.

The gun is snug beneath my pillow, the bed already made the way habit makes me do but which Dick never seems to care about. He won't check my bed. I'm not even sure if he'll sleep more than the three hours it's been so far.

I could leave, could go and find this Blockbuster, this Roland Desmond but I'm still not right, plans half formulated but my own thoughts confusing me. I don't know quite how to work Dick's computer, don't know exactly where to go to find Blockbuster's goons and threaten (beat) the information out of them. I have two different methods in my head for how to deal with this but I feel like I only have experience with one.

But non-lethal doesn't seem to be working for Dick and -

Robin isn't here. Robin can't help. Robin stands for hope, for tempering another's merciful side, for keeping them out of the dark.

I live in the dark now.

Dick isn't there, not yet, I can see it. He's still so far from it that he's a police officer that's never even used his own gun even though he should. He has a chance to end this legally, to prevent more people dying and he doesn't.

He's wrong, but even though I know that, that it makes a green rage stir up in me like sediment disturbed, I don't stop the slow repetitive actions I've been doing for these near three hours. I don't stop brushing fingers through his hair, running my cold, heavy hands down his arms, patting and soothing every time he twitches. 

I sit here, cross-legged, staring down at him and I try to think, try to plan but like the white static the TV screen had turned to when I'd punched my hand clear through it, sometimes everything blanks and I don't know how long I'm out of it.

I hear that static now, then the TV, an old movie on with the audio playing too soft for me to hear, hovering just out of clarity, the curling edges giving me a shape of the scene where I'm the one lying down in pain, my head in the lap of someone much bigger, stronger.

I want to reach for the memory but I see soil-crusted bones that reach out and that's all I am -

The skeleton of that boy but my flesh has been made renew, sewn up like Frankenstein's monster and everything is different.

They couldn't keep Dick safe like I do, couldn't couldn't. Another dead Robin.

Just put another Robin in sight of a crowbar and -

I don't think Replacement's body would handle it any better than mine had. He's so much smaller, so much easier to break.

Would the song he sing be sweeter than mine?

I feel sick green bile at the back of my throat but Dick is moving now, legs twitching, eyes fluttering and I don't have time to chase the various, fleeting bitterness that peppers and salts the graveyard inside me.

Right now I need to keep all that rage for Blockbuster.

“It's just me,” I say as I feel the minuscule shifts of Dick tensing into awareness, exhausted remnants clinging to his face and refusing to let go.

“Little wing,” he mumbles and I'm taken back, back – No.

I'll remember when I want to remember, I'm in charge.

“Yeah,” I say, slightly startled by how natural it feels, the inflection more my own then those monotonous yes's I remember giving until now.

I may just be a dead little bird, grotesque and patched together, but for once, I actually feel like I'm settling back into the old grooves of myself.

Dick's sitting up, trying to get my attention and I don't remember that happening.

Guess I'm still broken after all.

Dick looks fond, a little tug at his lip and says, “Did you watch over me this whole time?”

Two responses war in my head, a 'who else is going to take care of your sorry ass?' and the one I actually say.

“Yes, you had bad dreams. You need to sleep longer.”

“Little Wing,” Dick murmurs and leans forward to press our foreheads together. I keep my eyes open, seeing those thick lashes up close and then the blue of Dick's eyes as he open them.

“Thank you.”

I frown, paw at his neck, fingers curling around the nape. “You, you shouldn't go.”

Dick doesn't try to move back, just reaches up to hold onto my arm. “It's my job Jay, stopping bad guys.”

“But you don't stop them,” I try to explain, squirming with frustration at myself, the situation, him.

His expression is, I think it's hurt but he stays where he is and quips, “I've put away a fare few in my time.”

“But they don't stay away, they come back. Bad men come back because you're, you're nice,”

“- Nice,” he snorts.

“Too gentle. Blockbuster needs to die.”

His body jerks when I say the name and then he's pulling back, pulling himself away from me and off the bed. 

“That's not how we do things Jay – I can't just, it would make me -”

“We?”

Dick falls to a standstill, his body half-turned away from me.

We don't kill, we don't kill.

“We don't kill,” I say it out loud but it's only when Dick jerks, turns to me wide-eyed, face sallow that I realised I've said it.

Dick swallows then hesitantly nods, “Yeah, we don't kill.”

I can feel my face screw up, rage bleeding into everyone of my muscles and twisting my mouth into a snarl.

“Then you'll be killed and all the people you love will be killed. Innocent people will be killed.” It's coming out of my mouth hot now and each word is like a blow against Dick.

“I'll be killed. Do you want that Dickiebird?”

Dick recoils, face crumpling and I teeter between my rage and my sympathy. But I was the one that died, what right does he have to hurt more than me?

“Y-you don't understand Jason,” Dick whispers softly but he's holding himself and not looking at me. “I can't cross that line, I, I did it once and I don't -”

“If you, if you, killed a bad man brother,” - and it still feels somehow wrong to call him that - “then I know it was for a reason. You're saving people.”

Dick somewhat chokes then, a sob, a cough, his scarred chest bare and obviously trembling, the moonlight from the window cutting a glow against him.

“It didn't stick Jay, B – someone else was there and they revived him.”

“You, don't seem happy about that.” If someone brought back a person I'd decided needed to die, I wouldn't really be happy about it either.

Dick laughs, “No, I never really was.”

This talking has calmed me considerably, placed me on the side of sympathy instead of anger. 

He, he is a good person. A good cop, a good brother, a good man.

I don't want to hurt him but I'm scared, yes, that's what I feel. Scared because his 'rule' puts him in more danger and I have the gun now but I'm not strong enough to protect Dick. 

I might lose my mind halfway to finding Blockbuster and then wake up back in this house, covered in grime and the stink of outside.

I say, accidentally gruff because my throat is clogged, “Go eat cereal. Eat and drink water, hydrate, and think about what to do after.”

It's the butchered phrasing of someone else’s instructions, someone from long ago but the advice is still sound.

I can see he wants to fight, wants to say that he needs to go find Blockbuster, find that journalist yesterday, but I walk out past him, heading to the kitchen and carefully pouring two bowls of his super sweet cereal.

He follows in later, arms still crossed over and holding himself, his suit hanging from his legs and sits. I want to tell him to take the suit off, no costumes at the dinner table, but it's another fight I don't want to have.

I put his bowl in front of him, sit opposite with my own and start doggedly putting one spoon in my mouth after another. I still need to focus on making sure I don't shake, that the spoon goes clearly in my mouth so it's not strange for me to give Dick silence.

He eats, though one of the frozen more nutritional meals in the freezer would have been better, puts the bowl away, showers, gets changed into a new Nightwing suit and then leaves, informing me he's heading to the journalist's.

I wait and when I know he's gone I go to my room.

I take out the weighted gun.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plans get waylaid and then changed

I wander around the house for a few moments which stretches and lengthens and then I realise I've been here too long, the gun a heavy anchor in my hands.

There is something wrong, something I can sense, like a ticking at the back of my teeth but I don't know why I am still here.

I don't know, the uncomfortable sensation is like . . . wind, I can't see it, but I can feel it. No, not wind, something darker, heavier, more violent.

Like green gas.

I pace again, looking, checking the corners, rubbing at peeled up edges of paint, trying to see what that something wrong is but I can't.

I hear a noise outside, a little girl's laugh. I've heard it before though I can't remember her name. I think I like children, it's so easy for the world to ruin them, to make them like me. I want to make sure she's safe.

This place isn't safe, not now, not with what Dick told me.

I know what type of person Blockbuster is, I can taste it like dirt in my mouth and he wants to hurt Dick, wants to hurt him bad.

I usually go out the window but this time I hesitate, lift the window up, feel the whistle of a gust of air against my nose before I close it again, the muscles in my upper arm hurting from how tense I've been holding my body.

I get a jacket, it's one of Dick's bigger ones, thick leather from some undercover operation. I like it, it's got an aggressive look and it's better to look dangerous outside of this apartment than not.

I know how to open the window from outside so I don't need a key as I leave through the front door, hearing that little girl's laughter trickle from down the corridor. Door locked, the jacket high around my neck with gun hidden pressed to my stomach, I go towards the girl.

I just want to see her, to know that there is something young and innocent in this shitty town.

I round the corner, head down, peeking out the corner of my eyes but I misjudge and the little girl is there, smacking into my knees.

She bounces back, about to fall but with instincts that come and go, I quickly catch her. She blinks wide blue eyes in my arms, her tight black curls springing as her head bobs. Her little dark fingers are clenched around the sleeves of my jacket, their colouring similar, and I hear her Dad rush forward and start to apologise.

He takes her out of my arms and scolds her for running like that before apologising to me.

I haven't – apart from a little birdy, I haven't spoken to anyone that isn't Dick so I freeze for a moment, options of what to say before me shrivelling before I can choose one.

“Hey, you're Officer Grayson's guest aren't you? His brother I think he said.”

I nod, looking at the little girl snuggled into her father's arms, curious of the stupid, mute man.

“Sorry about that, this one's a bit of a handful.”

Say something Jason, say it!

“That is . . . okay,” I say slowly, my heart beating like a slow, heavy pound of someone's hand in my chest, the old Jason trying to get out and take over cause he could always talk to people fine, or at least he was good at pretending.

“Are you okay?” The dad asks, but then backtracks awkwardly. “Ah, Dick said you've been in an accident so I don't mean to pressure you. Did you want me to take you back to your apartment or are you going out somewhere?”

He's nice, and good excuse Dick, a vague accident that's left me weird. I have a feeling the father is slightly uncomfortable around what he thinks is probably a dumb mute but then again, at this moment I'm not proving him wrong in being uncomfortable.

I may be dumb and weird but I know something's wrong.

“Something is wrong, you . . . should leave. Danger.”

The father starts, a bit confused but mostly disbelieving. “Whoa there buddy, there's no danger, how about we get back to your room.”

“No!” I shake my head, take a step back, feeling the thick gun in my jacket. I look at the little girl, so secure and safe in her father's arms and know she's wrong to think that.

Wrong. Wrong.

I reach forward and I grab the man, ignoring his surprised yell, his attempts to calm me, and I start to drag them both out, out of the building. All the sounds are distorted, the way it sounds when I put my head under the bath water and I don't have time to pay attention to it.

Tick.

My head is a mess, but we don't see any other people and the father is just trying to soothe his daughter, his daughter who is crying now, crying, crying. The man is saying something and now he's turning, getting his daughter to the ground and she's running back inside.

“No!” I scream, try to stop them but the father, apologising, breaks the weak hold I now have and pushes me back, pushes me down the front steps. I fall and roll to my knees, seeing the man disappear inside, the door close.

I sit there momentarily, stunned, but my skin crawling, my tongue itching.

I see laughing faces in my head, a grave marked Nightwing and I -

Tick, tick.

Tick, tock, goes the clock.

There's a grate to the side of the door, that shows below into the basement. It's dark down there but a square shape with red numbers is so obvious when you've seen it before.

5

Oh.

4

It makes sense.

3

The best way to hurt Dick.

2

Is by hurting everyone around him.

1

I feel the heat before I notice the sound and it's a familiar memory, but I'm not in the middle this time, not like the little girl and her father.

It should happen to quick for me to see it but my eyes are wide open (this time) and it sparks, climbing its way up from the bottom, blowing out.

Meeting me face on, just the way I met my death last time.

I'm thrown back from the force of the explosion, the gun in my jacket useless and I fly.

_Fly Robin fly._

I fly until my back hits a wall, my head snapping back into it seconds later.

Everything goes dark.

*

I'm trapped, it's pushing me down and I feel all the breaks in my bones, the blood in my throat, choking me, suffocating me.

White pasty hands around my neck.

The edges beat into me, the coffin thick, unyielding.

I scream and scream and there's no point, I can't claw my way out, the wood won't budge under my bloody nails, the grave dirt is pushing my eyelids down so everything is dark.

There's a steady thrum in my ears, in my head, making the whole world move with it and my stomach lurches as it moves the coffin.

He's not coming, he's not coming.

My mouth is moving but it feels so far away from me, like it's not even attached to my body. Maybe it isn't, maybe it's a big wide red mouth and bats are pouring out of it, shrieking, screaming, shrills saying I'm not enough, I never was enough, I'm just a _replacement_.

The graveyard inside of me shudders and shakes and ash is falling from the sky, smoke everywhere and little, stupid Jason can't save himself.

Please, please.

“. . . please. Please.”

My useless fists beat above me, hot red rivulets of pain cutting down my forearms.

“ . . . No . . . no.”

Not again, not again.

“Let me out.”

I'll kill myself again before being stuck in here.

“Help.”

_Do you still think dear old Batsy is coming to save you?_

“Save me.”

_Aw, how sad._

“Batman.”

_Well this was fun, probably more for me than you though._

“Bruce.”

_Oh, and say hi to Dad for me._

“Dad.”

*

When I come out, lifting the rubble off, seeing my blood stain it, how most of my clothing is singed but the jacket I was wearing was reinforced, the gun leaving a soon-to-be bruise against my chest, I'm half-rabid, seeing two different scenes.

In one: the night is dark, rain pours on a moonlit graveyard and I don't know where I am, who I am, what I am.

In another: the rocks, cement and broken, grinding metal are the floor of a horror scene, a smouldering bombed shell of what used to be a building.

Amongst the war-zone is a figure in blue, frantic, screaming, calling out a name.

The name is familiar, the name is mine, but there a two different me's in my head right now and I don't want to be found.

Nobody found me last time, not in time anyway.

What time? 

I - I, I'm crying, I can feel it. Feel it like a burn down my cheeks.

I want to run to the man, have him hold me, promise to save me, keep me safe. But it's all just lies, lies.

I can't be found.

The man in blue needs this somehow. Or maybe I'm the one that does.

His body is shaking, he pulls something out of the rubble, the skin marked ashy-grey from soot and blood-loss. The sound of the broken building is loud as it is thrown away, the blue man so carelessly strong.

He pulls the girl into his arms, her features lax, her body limp.

She is dead.

Neither of us could save her.

He holds her body, rocks, keens and in the distance the sound of sirens start, people from the nearby surroundings making their way over.

But I don't go over to him.

Instead I - bloody, nails pulled back from clawing at the rocks, shrapnel piercing the tender, bare bits of my arms, legs and face - remove myself from the scene with faltering, wavering steps.

I keep an eye, puffy, stinging, on the man of blue and black, even as I remove the shrapnel, aware that some of my wounds are already closing, throbbing intensely before itching momentarily.

I come back in fragments, though I was never really whole before this and the green wash of rage, the bitterness of my own death and knowing what could have stopped this, is enough for me to piece together a decision.

It seems the most important decision I've ever made, it seems like the only one I can make.

I watch Dick let go of the young dead girl and flee into the city, his movements erratic but his all his awareness gone.

He is simple to follow, though he fails his rolls on the rooftops often, jarring shoulders the way they shouldn't and nearly misjudging leaps.

I follow, I follow, the night creeping closer and then he finally stops, stealing into some small alcove of an apartment building with a fire-ladder beside.

He collapses, curls into himself and doesn't notice me across the way, all but collapsing myself, the raw burn of my lungs still not strong enough to break me from this pool of certainty and focus I have fallen into.

I watch him, all night, even as he shivers in the cold that his suit should not let him feel.

He needs to kill Blockbuster, the monster won't stop.

And if I have to let Dick think I'm dead (again) for him to be able to do it, to cross that line, then that's what I have to do.

It's for the best.

I'm doing it to save him.

 

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

When Dick wakes, he is cold, shivering and I want to help him.

  
I have spent the night with my clarity of thoughts, sifting through what I know even as some memories already have their edges turning soft and curling away from me.

I remember what PTSD is, the definition and examples sliding into my knowing and I know that I had a flashback. I've seen people go through it before, on the streets, curled around their booze as the uncaring walk by, so blind to the poor people society keeps underfoot.

It's like a whole new part of my brain has opened up and all this information has slotted itself in, though in reality it is more that parts of my brain were being closed off from me, unable to deal with the trauma of dying and then being alive again.

People had always joked I was tenacious, clawing back from death definitely proved that.

Zombie-Jason, huh, I'm definitely a lot smarter than the ones in books.

I know I died and I know it was a monster that killed me, a monster that should have been put down years before I even met him.

I don't remember the monster exactly, that knowledge is still hidden from me and every time I try to push it, my body aches with remembered violence, my throat becomes parched as if I have been holding in screams all night.

I have been holding in screams all night; I didn't want to wake Dick.

Dick is uncurling now, stretching out limbs, working out knots in his neck and back muscles, limbering up the way ingrained habit has taught him to do even if his mind isn't there.

I'm sorry Dickiebird, but this is for the best.

The morning light is a dark orange and it would be ugly on big bird if he was capable of being ugly but even exhausted, with black bags heavy under his eyes, outfit still speckled with soot and the thin fabric at his fingers torn, Dick is beautiful.

I think, in the past, I might have felt a vicious, insecure jealousy, that I could never match up to someone so carelessly elegant, so bright. That I was different but I'd loved it, hadn't wanted to stop but that insecurity always underscored every success, that I could be thrown away without any notice.

But now is different, and I don't worry about matching because that isn't my job, I'm not his copy anymore.

I'm his shadow and shadow I am as he gets up, staring into the sun long enough that it should make his eyes water, as if he can sear the images of the dead little girl away. Death isn't enough for the monster that did this, he should be made to _hurt_ but the images will stay.

Dick is too kind to forget those who have died, but not strong enough to avenge them. It's a sort of selfishness, just like him, like -

He'll use the dead to spur him on in this useless Mission, but not enough to sacrifice his own morals and kill the murderers.

That will change.

Rotating his shoulders, Dick reaches out to the ladder beside him and uses it to climb up. Rotating my own limbs, cracking my neck and going quietly to the balls of my feet, I am lucky he is so out of it because I do not have a grapple gun like he does, and so the paths I have to take a longer, louder and exhausting.

Dick makes his way across the city, the sun rising higher, though clouds ominously linger at the bottom, checking in on his various contacts.

He watches the police, disappears into the building for a long enough time that I am tempted to go in myself, until he returns with head bowed and an ear piece he places in.

I wonder if he will try to call the little baby bird, if he will ask for help.

He does not.

He makes his way back to the wreck of our building, listening in to the hustle and bustle of the emergency services that are still trying to work their way through the rubble, dogs sniffing and searching for any survives. He taps the side of his mask and I can see him scanning the area, looking for body heat, for anyone alive.

The outcome is grim and I can tell from the blast that anyone who wasn't incinerated in the centre would have died from the weight of the building crushing them. Anyone in an air pocket would most likely be dead by now too.

I want them to live but they're all civilians and the terror of this experience would most likely break them so maybe it's best. Then again, Gothamites are a tougher breed then anywhere else, maybe they would be okay.

It surely broke me though, Zombie-Jason is just a patchwork of the pieces I used to be but that's okay, it's good enough. I know what my purpose is now and my pieces aren't loosely connected anymore, vengeance is gluing me together.

It's righteous justice.

Dick stays there, time passing, passing, swaying with the breeze, unblinking eyes waiting for them to pull me out. If he would turn he would see the heat of my outline but he doesn't.

There is that anger again, but part of it is because he doesn't see me, he never sees me.

I don't know where that came from. I know it was from the past, from my first life though.

I don't like being angry at Dick, and for a moment I second-guess myself, wondering at the stabs of vicious delight at his pain that underlies my decision. I don't want to hurt him, but I think, in the past, that he hurt me.

Old Jason wanted some payback for being forgotten, overlooked.

Old Jason was desperate, vicious, so insecure inside. He just wanted safety and love and praise but it's dangerous to want those things when you'll never get it.

Best to pretend you don't need it, that it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter, I don't matter, not now, not when this is so much more important.

Dick leaves and he makes his way to the reporter, to her apartment and he asks her what has she done and why.

I don't like reporters, even if this is the first one I've met in my second life. They're poke and they prod and stick their noses into places where it just causes everyone grief and nothing good comes out of it and they think it's their right. The ask questions and sneer and write nasty little comments about 'Street-rat adopted by millionaire' as if that's all I ever was, as if it was some sort of failing to be able to survive in a place that those reporters wouldn't even go to. They couldn't last ten seconds in my life, first or second.

I don't see the sniper, wet and cold outside in the rain, so caught in my own thoughts, in distantly observing Dick's breakdown as he struggles to find some way out of this that doesn't involve Blockbusters death.

The reporter is trying to comfort him, saying that it's the bad guy's fault when it's hers too. She just doesn't want to take any responsibility, for the 34 lives Dick says, that are now gone. I wonder if he's counting me in that number.

If he put the fear of Bat into her, if he grabbed her around the throat and squeezed till the bruises started to form back when she first started investigating him then she would have stopped looking, she wouldn't know -

That Dick Grayson was Nightwing.

That Jason Todd was just a dead Robin.

That there was a third Robin.

That they were all just so easily replace to the Bat -

I don't see the shooter and I don't see the gun until the bullet is slicing clear through the glass and straight into Maxine Michaels' head.

She drops and Blockbuster follows the path of the bullet, so close to me where I'm hidden crouched in the neighbours balcony.

He doesn't see me at all, and it's funny because that was always the opposite of my job as Robin, being bright, meant to attract, distract, divide.

The new little Robin is much less brighter than I was.

Less of a target.

Blockbuster taunts Dick, saying all the things we all already know.

There is no reason for Dick not to kill him, Blockbuster is actively going out of his way to taunt Nightwing and his only safeguard is that the man under the mask is too confined by his mentor's morals, for the fear of disappointing him, that he won't kill.

Blockbuster and Dick go tumbling out the door. Blockbuster, the monster that he is, aims for an innocent neighbour. Dick saves him with a batarang to Blockbusters hands and I, creeping in through the neighbours window, open the door to pull the man inside to safety.

I tell him, "Go out the window, climb down, run," because I can't tell him to stay.

Blockbuster might have rigged this place to blow too.

I come back out the door, closing it behind me to see another man on the ground with a scattered bowl of chips beside him. I lumber over, drag him up and push him in the direction of the little green man.

"Leave, now!" I bark out and there is something dark in my throat, the memory of how someone else spoke that could scare me witless though I never lost my wits, and it scares this man too.

He runs and I follow the path of destruction and blood Nightwing and Blockbuster have left behind.

I hear Blockbuster's threats, know that he will do what he says, that he will destroy everyone around Dick, anyone who so much as looks at him and it will ruin Dick, break him.

Dick doesn't like being alone, I think he hates it.

I've left him alone.

Blockbuster says he couldn't save his circus, he couldn't save his relationship -

O. Oracle.

Whoever she was. There something familiar in that but I don't think I ever knew this person.

Blockbuster is bleeding on the steel stairwell now, grinning through the blood on his face, the red that's seeped into the spaces of his teeth and he's still taunting with wild-eyed delight.

He isn't a man, he is monstrous, an animal.

Dangerous animals need to be put down.

But Dick isn't doing it, he isn't, he isn't.

I get out my gun, Officer Grayson's gun and point it at Blockbuster's head. He can't see me and for once, my aim is steady, my arms don't shake.

Everything is cold around, a little bubble of steel I'm in, with that rusted bloody smell in my nose.

I breathe.

Even for me, Jason, one of those 34.

He won't do it.

He won't.

He can't.

I feel nothing.

Breathe.

A woman arrives, costumed, orange. She's holding a gun, aimed at Blockbuster and Blockbuster is so sure, so confident that Dick will sacrifice his own life to save him, because that is what a Hero does, that is what Nightwing does.

The woman isn't asking Dick to kill Blockbuster, she's just asking him to let her.

I wait, everything is still.

Maybe Dick won't be able to kill for me but he won't stop me for killing for him.

Metal in my mouth, a crowbar softly pressing against my heart.

Dick turns away.

And the woman shoots.


End file.
